Far From The Tree
by Azdoine
Summary: There is more than one kind of apple in the world.
1. Chapter 1

The new apple does not come slowly.

To be sure, the apple comes in starts and stops, as people choose it for themselves or turn it down. But the Devil, more than anything else, is an idea. Group West and what's left of the Summer Scouts don't win in some bloody struggle against God and his Angels; they "win" because they live well, and lead by example, and the rest comes as a consequence.

The new apple is not an apple; it is the word people give to the idea of the Devil, when they meet the Adversary and take succor, when they find her and know her as an Advocate.

* * *

It has only been seven days and seven nights since Group West carved out a coming-of age in the span of hours. But people are already uncertain.

"We have to fly under the radar," Pollux says, conferring with Castor in bent voice and low tones.

"Or what?" Saturn asks. "The Church will come for us?"

"Yes!"

"Oh, please. This whole _camp_ was the Church, and now look at it."

Castor grunts. "The camp counselors were mostly a bunch of bored college kids working to pad their resumes, born-again hipsters, and crotchety old men. Of course they couldn't do much to stop us."

He leaves it unsaid that the rest of the world does _not_ consist of college kids and old men, but that doesn't really need to be spelled out. No-one wants to imagine how things might go wrong, the kind of trouble they could bring down all atop their heads.

The handful of the ex-counselors who have already eaten of the new apple don't disagree. One of them laughs, perhaps at herself.

"It's not about logistics," Jupiter mutters. She says it to herself, under her breath, but people still listen to her. It's become a novel experience, being taken seriously, being treated with respect. The last time people listened to her, that was when she was important, before she screwed up and got sent to the Summer Scouts. She wonders when she'll screw up again.

"What _is_ it about, then?" Someone asks.

It almost hurts to put it in words, but really: what's even the point? What's the point of being the Devil, if you still have to live with the fear of God?

Every last bad kid in the camp got to where they are by being afraid of themselves. But they learned to be afraid of themselves because they were afraid of what grown-ups might do to him, and afraid of what God might do to them - and Jupiter knows that they'll never really get anywhere, if they stay afraid of grown-ups forever.

That's only a way to re-learn how to be afraid of yourself all over again.

"That's naive," someone says. But the funny thing is, he believes Jupiter anyways.

* * *

Summer finally ends, and they're all due back home. Group West is there at the edge of camp, to preempt their parents rather than let them go on in the dark, asking too many questions.

"I'm not going with you," Jupiter says. She's not going home with them because that wouldn't be _home_. She's not sure she has a home.

Jupiter's mother screams at her. She cries. She begs, and pleads, and quotes errant verses of the bible as if to assemble some new exorcism, to force the Devil out of Jupiter. But what exorcism would be enough, if you _are_ the Devil? You can't force yourself out of yourself.

Jupiter's father takes it in stride, as if he'd expected this all along. Not thrilled, but accepting.

For a moment, Jupiter dares to hope.

"I know you're not happy," she begins. But her father shakes his head.

"If I was younger," he says.

Jupiter has never hated her father more. How can he not even try? She cares so much about him that it _hurts_ , because even if she likes to linger on his lenience, she knows that he's not the kind of father than she needs. But she still cares about him, so why can't he care about himself?

The anger never goes anywhere, because she can see that her father isn't even there. He's off in his head, imagining a story about when he was young, and when he might have taken a different road. He's off in his head, imagining a story about when he was young, before he tried the same things that Group West are trying now, before he got thrown into a different, harsher kind of camp, before he got chained at the hip to a woman that he doesn't know how to love.

Maybe he's not even there, maybe he's not even in his own head. Jupiter has always imagined her father with a kind of verve, but it's not there, he's only going through the motions, and it makes her just as abysmally sad as she is bitterly angry-

"Goodbye," Jupiter says. Neptune takes her hand, and Venus the other, and then they're gone.

* * *

A few days later, twelve sharp young men in sharper clothes come down the road, bibles in hand, like every caricature of an evangelist you've ever imagined, from the foggiest fever-dreams of divine punishment.

 _Excuse me, do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior, Jesus Christ?_

 _No? Well, let us help you_ make _some time..._

This happens three more times, before Mars gets tired of having to keep rebuilding the front path, and they scare off the door-to-door preachers.

The Church gets a little bit more _subtle_ after that, but not before things start to catch on. The Devil is an idea that spreads like wildfire.

* * *

"I'm not supposed to be talking to you, you know," the kid says.

It's two months into the depths of Autumn, and Neptune has already made her way across three states, pushing through water-ways and the water table. She's not in _every_ place, not in every drop of sweet water, but she could be, if she thought of it. The Devil is indefinite; the Devil is imprecise.

Right now, Neptune is back at camp, running her fingers through Venus' hair, but she's also sitting in the bottom of a sink, in the middle of nowhere.

Just hours ago, the town around her was in a drought dry enough to kill. The land should be deprived, but there is always more water to go around, because there's always more of Neptune to go around, if she wants to extend a hand and watch rivers condense from the fine cracks in her skin.

In some sense, she'll always be _just_ for Venus and Jupiter, but how can she not give something to this arid place? There is something soothing to give like this, even for her. It's soothing to _give_ without also tearing down; she's so used to tearing people down, whether she thought she was doing it to be honest, or otherwise.

The people around here are suspicious, of course. They've heard the stories of the people who have drunk from tainted wells, and become monsters. _There's something in the fucking water!_

It's all a misunderstanding, though. No-one will drink from the tap and shed his skin like Gregor Samsa; the Devil is an idea that comes to you in the dark nights of the soul, when your throat is parched. The Devil isn't a poison to run away from.

The kid isn't as suspicious as the others. She stares down at Neptune, _curious_ , rather than flinching away.

And Neptune rises from the sink like a serpent.

"If you're not supposed to talk to me, then why are you doing it?" Neptune asks. "Don't you worry about getting in trouble?"

"I'm always getting in trouble," the kid says with a scowl. "If I didn't do things because I thought I'd get punished for it, I'd never get to do _anything_."

"You don't say," Neptune laughs.

Miles away, someone asks her what's so funny, and Neptune stretches herself out, carrying on two conversations like a raindrop between two panes of glass.

"Who are you, anyways?" the kid asks.

Neptune mulls it over, and sloshes from side to side. "You first, kid."

"Janus."

"Well, Janus, I'm the Devil… but you can call me Neptune."

Janus looks at Neptune like Neptune looks at every adult who gives her shit. "You don't _look_ like the Devil."

"And what does the Devil look like, exactly?"

"Meaner than you!"

"Oh, trust me, I can be _very_ mean," Neptune drawls. Something in her tone of voice seems to put Janus off, but she doesn't completely back down.

"Well why aren't you being mean, then?"

"Do you really wanna know, Janus?"

Janus swallows. "I-I don't think so."

"That's fair," Neptune says, looking around. She and Janus are in a secluded bathroom, behind closed doors. "So why did you want to talk to me?"

Janus folds up her arms. "What, I'm just thirsty! I figured you'd talk or you wouldn't, and then I could know whether you were safe to drink."

Neptune smiles, wistful and distracted. She extends her arm, and water collects in a cupped hand.

"That's a little creepy. Can you put it in a glass, or something?"

"Sure, kid," Neptune says.

Janus drinks, and she doesn't become the Devil - certainly not for any reason as tawdry as having _imbibed_ the Devil. There is no transubstantiation. But something happens, and it is this: Janus sees the Devil as kind.

* * *

Janus doesn't speak to Neptune many more times - or rather, Neptune doesn't speak to Janus many more times.

Neptune knows that there are some things you can't do for another person - you can't _mature_ for another person, because it's always up to them to grow up, if they're going to grow up at all. You can't _choose_ for another person, not in this way. You can't really become friends with someone, if you're the only one between the two of you who knows what friendship _means_.

And even if you _can_ , maybe you shouldn't. Neptune might be the kind of person who can, but she certainly feels like she's not the kind of person who _should_.

And yet-

And yet, Neptune is busy. Neptune has this conversation three more times in the next week, with three different people.

Neptune doesn't exactly _stop_ having this conversation.

* * *

It's the middle of winter, and the air is thin.

"Is there anyone left in this town who _isn't_ the Devil?" Janus asks, two tongues lashing with frustration.

Less than half a dozen people raise their hands.


	2. Chapter 2

Venus is eighteen, and this is hardly the farthest she's ever been from home.

Neptune and Jupiter? Well, not so much.

Jupiter stares at the great gate and trellis far ahead, with no small amount of trepidation. Neptune is far more relaxed. She wiggles her bare toes through the dirt underfoot; it is already soft and blooming with the waters that once gave life to the fertile crescent.

"Are you okay?" Venus asks, squeezing Jupiter's hand.

"No," Jupiter admits. "But there's no way in hell I'll let that stop me."

In some way, perhaps this has always been her idea after all. _What's the point of being the Devil, if you still have to live with the fear of God?_

So they wander up the gentle slope together, going where no-one else has dared to go in a long time. Even the new generation, the youth who are become the Devil, they stay away from this place. They pour their heart and soul into new urban legends, the ways in which they are now allowed to be afraid of the divine.

Finally, Venus comes to a stop in front of the gate, as close as she can get without burning in the prickling light of the gate-keeper. The gate-keeper turns its head to watch them all without opening its numinous, numerous eyes.

Venus has more eyes than the gate-keeper does, anyways. Not that she'd ever _brag_ about it, or anything. _  
_

 **WHY HAVE YOU COME?** the gate-keeper asks, without opening its mouth.

Venus knows, perhaps, what people have called this thing in the past. An archangel. A cherubim.

But Venus looks at this thing and sees God. Not as she has always imagined it, though; she sees God the same way that she sees the Devil in Jupiter and Neptune. She sees the _idea_ of God, running through the sunlight bones of the gate-keeper. She pities it, on some level.

"I want to enter," Venus says.

The gate-keeper considers this.

 **NO.**

The gate-keeper draws a blade, the edge turning every which way - but even this is not enough. Venus knows the history, all of the people who have been sundered, and she knows that the blade would sunder them all.

So they don't try.

The cherubim at the entrance of the Garden of Eden is not defeated by the power of the Devil; there is no glorious duel of holy and unholy powers. The cherubim is defeated because it is old and calcified, and it is angel-rigid. It only has a sword for North and South, East and West. It does not have a sword for Up, and it guards the _gate_ rather than the _garden_.

Venus and Jupiter carry Neptune in over the walls, and the garden is quiet with solace.

It should be sacrosanct, and immanent, but instead, it just _is_. It is not the Garden of Eden, all in capital letters; it is only a garden. It is just like any other place in the universe, it _has_ to be just like any other place. If God truly created all of existence in seven days, then there's no reason why this corner of existence is any more special than any other.

At least, that's how Venus feels, with eyeshot down a trail into the center. It doesn't dishearten her, that this garden is only a garden. There is still wonder in the universe. After all, it is a beautiful day, and it is a beautiful garden; and Jupiter and Neptune are there to share it with her.

At the center of the garden, there is an uneven and ragged hill, from which a single great tree sprouts. Fruit blooms from the branches, and Venus reaches up into the air to pluck one ripe apple-orb down.

It grows warm in her hands.

"You can have the first bite," Neptune says.

"What? Why am _I_ the designated guinea pig?"

"You _know_ why," Neptune replies.

Venus rolls her eyes. She knows that it won't hurt her, no more than anything else has. She has become more and more _constant_ , over the last handful of years, as constant as the speed of light. Not fixed, not static, but constant in _herself_. That alone is reason enough to leave _her_ to test the apple.

She takes a bite of the thing, and gasps with surprise. Juice runs down her throat and chin, rich like fruit cured in the salt of sea-foam.

She closes her eyes, and savors the taste.

"Well?" Jupiter asks softly. "Are you okay?"

"I haven't been smited so far," Venus replies. "And the Bible says that only one of the trees was forbidden to eat from, anyways, but Adam and Eve ate from that one already."

"Do you have knowledge of good and evil?" Neptune asks. "Or have you - I dunno, if this is the tree of life, what would the fruit even do? Make you more alive…?"

"I think..." Venus trails off. "I think it tastes good. Really good."

Neptune raises an eyebrow, and Venus stops herself from taking a second or third bite, passing it along to her girlfriend.

"Wait," Jupiter says. "Maybe you shouldn't. It could be some kind of lotus… eater... fruit…?"

She trails off, as Neptune makes a face like she would rather be eating _anything_ else. She only barely stops herself from spitting it out, but she's well used to choking down medicine.

"Nevermind," Jupiter says.

"Venus, how can you stand this?" Neptune splutters.

"The same way I stand _you_ , probably," Venus says.

"Oh, no, I'm _sour_ ," Neptune snipes right back. "This just tastes… same-ey."

Jupiter reaches out with a particularly long arm to grab the fruit, and she takes a bite for herself.

"Well?" Neptune asks.

"I guess I've had better." Jupiter shrugs and passes the fruit back to Venus.

Venus continues to dig into the thing, and Neptune snickers, but it's not just the taste that Venus is looking for.

Her bite exposes the core, revealing a tight knot of seeds in the center of the fruit.

"You've had better, huh?" Neptune asks. She's turned to Jupiter, but she still gives Venus a sly look from the corner of her eye. "I can see that. I know I preferred _our_ apple."

Jupiter is happy to play along, reaching out with a red hand to wipe the trail of juice away from Venus' chin. And Venus learns that not even the same-ness of this pale fruit can ward off Neptune's lips.

Venus knows that the fruit from this garden may be sweet, but so many things are indeed sweeter.

As it turns out, the most delicious thing about the fruit of the tree of life is that it gives you time to partake of everything else.

* * *

Jupiter is twenty, now, and the only reason that she's staying at the place that used to be Summer Scouts Camp is because it is easy.

It's where the three of them met. It's a place where they know they'll never have to deal with everything they left behind, and they'll never have to deal with _why_ they left things behind. It hurts to think about, sometimes, but it is what it is.

She's looking out of the window at the sunset, and a flushed light casts her face all red. Below the sky, everyone else is tucking in.

Somehow, people don't take Jupiter so seriously anymore. But the thing that amazes her is that she never did anything wrong. Or at least, she didn't do anything wrong more than anyone else might. She's made mistakes, but the only one who has vilified her for that is herself.

Instead, people have simply… grown up. In crisis, the other bad kids turned to her, and Venus, and Neptune, because they were looking for proof that they could be who they wanted to be. But even then, it was ad hoc.

And now, she is respected… but she has no obligations of leadership. Or if she does have obligations, they aren't sharp and weighty, like she used to see them.

"They don't need us anymore," Jupiter says. Neptune thinks about this, placing the context, and then shakes her head.

"They never needed us."

"They sort of needed us," Venus offers agreeably. "Well. They needed _someone_."

"Same difference," Neptune replies. "They never needed _us_."

"You know what I mean, girls," Jupiter says. She tilts her head back. "You're _both_ pretty. And insightful."

("Not me," Venus says.)

("You are too!" Jupiter and Neptune both say simultaneously.)

(Venus blushes.)

"So what are you thinking?" Neptune asks. Venus turns up from her place lying across the back of the couch, her face attentive.

"Maybe we should go home," Jupiter says.

The other two girls stare at her like she's stupid, and for a moment Jupiter feels like she's messed everything up all over again. But she shakes herself. _No_. They look at her because they're confused, not because they're condescending to her.

"I mean… _this_ isn't home," Jupiter tries to explain. "But home certainly isn't with our families."

("I think home _is_ with my family," Venus says, perfectly earnest. "My family is you two.")

("Oh my fuck. That is so sappy, I think my kidneys are dead.")

("Eat me, Neptune.")

"So where _is_ home, then?" Neptune asks slowly.

"I don't know," Jupiter says. "But the longer we stay here, no matter how we renovate or rebuild these cabins and this camp, the more I start to wonder if I _ever_ had a home."

Venus winces, the lash of familiar pain. But her face shows the steel underneath the soft light and feathers.

"Then let's _find_ a home," she says. "The three of us, together."

* * *

Jupiter tries again with her father, but the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Venus tries again, but she doesn't stick around when her family looks at her like she hasn't changed at all.

Neptune wonders if _she_ should try again. But she wonders if she's too bitter, and she knows that her mother won't forgive her bitterness. And if her mother won't forgive her, then will she come home crying, and hating herself for caring?

Probably not. But Neptune also wonders if she shouldn't take the chance at all, when Jupiter and Venus need her to be a rock, for a time.

* * *

And so they dry their eyes and look for home.

Venus and Jupiter can bear the three of them on the four winds and on wings of light; Neptune can bear the three of them on blistering ocean currents. They can all bear more punishment than can be believed, and so they cross the world, searching for a place that might be comfortable. A place that won't be _uncomfortable_ , the way so many places are, even for women fired in the Devil's crucible.

They meet the Devil in Prague and Jerusalem, in Russia and all throughout Europe. Further afield, they meet other people, and stranger things, the aftershocks left in the wake of the Devil's liberation in the West.

Somehow, tourism doesn't bring them any closer to home.

"Maybe…" Jupiter trails off. "Do you think we're… romanticizing?"

"I don't know," Venus says. "Anything might be better than camp, though."

Camp is too charged with the gripping fog of nostalgia and pain alike. One day, perhaps the three of them will return, to visit the cabin where they found the new touch, and _remember_ -

But it's not a place they can live in. It's too immense, too intense.

Neptune eventually caves. She closes her eyes and throws a dart at an appropriate map to pick a town, and does it a few more times to find a place where they won't be kicked out just for being gay, or being trans, or being three instead of two.

Maybe it's not perfect. But it's _good enough_ , and that makes it homier and cozier than anything else they could have tried.

* * *

Their new home welcomes them warmly, taking them into open arms.

It is a sleepy place a stone's throw from a lake, and Neptune spends many a morning soaking into the waters while Jupiter snoozes with the rest of the town. Venus can never seem to decide whether she wants to join Neptune or Jupiter, which is part of how she keeps ruining her sleep schedule.

"Don't make me institute a curfew, Venus."

"You wouldn't!" Venus says. Jupiter gasps, with all of the proper dramatic timing.

"Try me!"

They try. Jupiter is almost more worked-up at the joke than Venus is, tackling Neptune while she puts on a bellow, and Venus follows after. Three of them end up tangled together in the shade of an oak, a giggling mess.

"What's," Neptune gasps. "So funny?"

"Nothing," Jupiter says. "I'm just, so so happy."

Jupiter bursts out into laughter before Neptune can, and Venus is not forgotten, circling them in hale golden wings.

"I'm happy that I'm happy!" Jupiter cackles, now almost delirious. "What's wrong with me?"

"Nothing at all," Neptune says.

And Venus smiles softly. She cries; she can't help herself. "I'm happy that you're happy, too."


	3. Chapter 3

It has been decades since the last time Venus visited the garden, but the cherub at the gate has never learned anything at all.

She touches down in the center of the place, basking in morning-dew light. She hasn't brought anyone with her, but she isn't alone.

"It's been a long, long time, hasn't it?" a voice calls out. It sounds like ash and ambrosia, and it's a familiar note in Venus' ears. It sounds clean, slipping through the open air rather than the crackling of a radio.

"I suppose it has," Venus admits, when she gathers her wits.

There is a serpent coiled and draped over one of the long tree-branches. Its scaled skin pulses warm and red like a heart. Like an apple.

The snake gives Venus one long, slow blink.

"It's good to see you," Venus says.

"Oh?" The serpent asks. "The first time you were here, I remember you went to such an effort never to come back..."

"I took seeds," Venus says. "I'm sorry. I was just thinking... that if the fruit would turn out to be valuable, there would be no way that we could get the fruit to everyone in the world from just one tree. I wasn't trying to avoid you, I didn't even know that you were here."

The serpent shivers and hisses, and it takes Venus an effort to make out the tortuous body language. It's chuckling.

"Ah, no harm done… there's all the time in the world, now, isn't there?"

There's no threat in the words.

"So why have you come back, girl?" the serpent asks, "Not for me, I imagine. More of the fruit?"

Venus smiles ruefully, reaching up to grab a single apple from the tree. Even unpolished and in the wild, the shiny surface of the fruit is smooth enough that she can make out her own face.

"We needed another fruit," Venus says simply. "I thought I might take it from the source."

"Something for the new generation, then?" the serpent hisses, and Venus' face colors. Embarrassed, maybe, but without shame. "You _are_ a thoughtful one."

A comfortable silence descends on the two of them, and the serpent slithers and coils, turning to leave.

"Wait," Venus says.

"Yes, girl?"

Venus is ashamed to say it the way that she does, but she has to say it, she's spent too long staring into the back of her eyelids and trying to _understand_. If she doesn't ask, she'll never _know_.

"You're not real, are you?" Venus asks quietly.

The serpent droops, and it unfolds into the shape of the Devil. The Devil is messy; she is imprecise.

"Whatever do you mean by that?" The Devil asks.

"You're not real," Venus says. "Maybe you're real enough to live in me, and to live in everyone. You're even real enough to call us on the radio, and to appear in front of me right now. But you're not… you're not _real_ , are you?"

The Devil looks sad, but she doesn't disagree. "You are the Devil, and you're real, aren't you?"

"It's not the same," Venus says.

"I know it's not the same," the Devil says.

Venus looks up at the sky, and her eyes pick out the thrumming of radio waves, wavelengths outside of normal visible light. The asteroid belt is subsumed by charms and alchemy, hollow vessels circling in orbit like diamonds strung along a necklace.

"I remember, when I still really believed in God, as more than a just-so story for big kids and grown-ups, I had the opportunity to use my radio once or twice. I've cast you out before."

"You did," the Devil says.

"And I cast you out with light, something God gave to me." Venus sighs. "So why did you make me into this? Why did you make me this angel of light?"

The Devil is quiet.

"I think you already know why," the Devil says. "Or at least you can guess."

"I don't think you're very different from God after all," Venus says. "I think that God is just the story we told ourselves about why we lived in a harsh world. I think that God is just the story we told ourselves about why we weren't happy, and how we could be happy in a harsh world; and I think that people believed in that story so deeply they learned to _become_ the story, as deeply as anyone else became the Devil.

"And I think that you, as you are now - you're only the story we told ourselves, when we realized that we could be happy by making a softer world for our own, instead."

"Is that not real enough for you?" the Devil asks curiously.

Venus looks at the Devil, and sees a shape of dust-motes in a beam of light.

" _Everything_ is a story, Venus. This explanation of who me and God are is the story you tell yourself so as to make sense of us. Hell, _you're_ a story, and you see the author every time you look in a mirror."

"If everything is a story, then nothing is a story," Venus says. "And nothing is real."

"If you want something real," the Devil begins. "If you want something real, then don't look for _me_ of all things. Look for the people you love."

And this, finally, breaks the spell. "The last time I said something so cheesy, I think Neptune made me sleep on the couch."

"You're welcome," the Devil says, her grin brimming with cheek.

Venus turns to go, but she stops at the last second, thinking of impossible possible things.

"I know you're real enough to talk. And some people need an ear to listen, or a voice to hear. So… could you talk to the guardian at the gate? For me?"

But the Devil is already gone, like she was never real at all. And Venus is left to look at the lopsided hill from which blooms the tree of life, imagining the second impossible thing of the day.

She extends her arms and wings and begins to dig with all of the strength of the Devil, unearthing the second tree in time.

The tree of knowledge blooms underground, without light, and it bears leathery fruit. Venus takes one from the nearest branch, and called by the taboo, she tries to peel open the rind.

The skin of the fruit is empty.

* * *

The skin of the fruit should be bitter, but there is a tang, and it is only sweet.


End file.
